The following is excerpted from the Epilogue of Sexism Is A Sin: The
Biblical Basis of Female Equality written by J.R. Hyland, Editor of Humane
Religion.

In spite of enormous difficulties there are men who, in varying degrees, have
given expression to the female principle. Even when ridiculed and ostracized for
trying to be caring, nonviolent, human beings, they have not turned back.
Despite enormous social and psychic pressures that attempt to coerce them into
accepting the gospel of machismo, many men have chosen the gospel of Christ.

They do this in the face of overwhelming odds. From earliest childhood boys
are taught that the way to become men is to repress all evidence of the female
principle. They learn to despise any sign of femininity in themselves or in
their peers. The male/female identity that is their birthright is perverted by
parents who were also raised to be incomplete beings.

Fathers set the behavioral standards for their sons and because women have
surrendered their autonomy, they defer to their husband's judgment. The mother
agrees not to commit the cardinal sin of "feminizing" her son or "emasculating"
him by demanding the same loving kindness and nonviolence she expects from her
daughter. She accepts the dictum that "boys will be boys" and allows her child
to be given weapons for his earliest toys. And when her young son is taught to
kill animals for recreation and pleasure, she agrees to call this brutality male
bonding. Then, when he becomes of age and is taught to kill other women's sons
in the endless wars that never bring peace, she says he is serving God and
country.

The same women who, at great cost to themselves, nurture their children—who
love and protect them as they journey from infancy to adulthood—allow their sons
to be conditioned to violence. They allow them to be carefully taught to become
the kind of men in whom compassion and concern have been diminished to the point
that they will not interfere with the requirements of a machismo society. #